Henry Kruger (J. Edward Bromberg) is a neglected father. His wife Alice (Isabel Randolph) and two children, James (Eric Sinclair) and Phyllis (Lorell Sheldon) take advantage of him and then ignore him. He is also the publisher of The Tribune newspaper. Henry has an on-going feud with competing newspaper, The Daily Argus, publisher Andy McDonald (Paul Guilfoyle). Henry considers The Argus trash.
One morning at breakfast he opens the paper to see a picture of his daughter Phyllis, accompanied by her boyfriend Jeffrey Dodd (John Shay), and a scandalous headline. Henry is furious. Along with his chauffer Mack Hogan (Frank Jenks), Henry heads to the offices of McDonald. Hot words are exchanged. Henry threatens McDonald. The exchange is heard by one of McDoanld’s lackeys, ‘Slippery’ Joe Clary (Ben Welden). Henry points out that Clary shouldn’t be so loyal since he was put in jail previously due to McDonald’s testimony and McDonald had a dalliance with his girlfriend while he was away.
After this exchange Henry leaves but is still stressed out. Mack recommends that Henry take a vacation and let his family try to deal without him for a while. Maybe then they’ll realize how much they really need him. They pack and head out to Henry’s country home without telling anyone where they are going.
In the meantime McDonald tells Clary that he wants him to kill Henry. Clary sees no reason why he shouldn’t just kill McDonald. McDonald reminds Clary that he has a signed confession from Clary for another murder, in his safe. Clary kills McDonald and puts his body in Henry’s trunk before he leaves for the cabin. Clary then goes back to McDonald’s office and blows open the safe looking for the confession. He realizes that McDonald secretly put the confession in his pocket. Now Clary has to find Henry and his car and extract the confession from McDonald’s pocket before the police find the body.
When Clary gets to the cabin he finds out that the body is no longer in the trunk. Henry found the body and was going to throw it into a steep ravine. When he opened the trunk the body was gone. Mack found the body after Henry did and moved it. Now Mack and Henry need to get rid of the body, Clary is looking for the body, and there is a new cop on the force, Officer Jimmy Trigg (Archie Twitchell), that believes Henry and Mack are acting awfully suspicious.
“The Missing Corpse” was released in 1945 and was directed by Albert Herman. It is a poverty row “B” movie from PRC and a comedy/crime movie.
Most of the acting was bland. Frank Jenks was great as always and Isabel Randolph as Alice was also decent. Charles Coleman as Egbert the butler was also amusing. Everyone else was pretty bad. Granted the characters were all one sided but you need to do more than just say your lines to be an actor. The dog had no lines and he was better than most of the humans.
The story itself was cute. There is no mystery but it is a comedy. It’s an entertaining little game of who’s got the button, except with a dead body, and it’s short at a minute or two over an hour. It’s no brain teaser, just a little low budget “B” movie to fill in the lower half of a double bill.